Debates about disability – whether related to production and industry, content and representation, or audiences and consumption – have been largely ignored in the study of television, and this special edition of Journal of Popular Television aims to encourage the field to engage in this increasingly significant topic. We intend to provide a space to explore the contributions television studies and disability studies can make to one another, as areas of enquiry but also as fields engaged in the socio-political world.

We acknowledge the wide range of ways in which ‘disability’ has been defined and welcome submissions that engage with the complexity of the term and the uses to which it is put. Likewise we are interested in ‘television’ in its broadest sense, whether fictional or non-fictional, from docudramas and comedy to news and sports across all platforms.

We are keen for the edition to include as wide a range of voices, formats and approaches as possible, so while the ‘traditional’ academic article is welcomed, we also encourage other formats, such as personal reflections, treatises and manifestos or anything else that may be relevant and appropriate. Submission lengths may also be variable, so shorter and longer pieces are also invited.

We therefore invite expressions of interest from those interested in contributing to the special edition. This is due to be published in Autumn 2015, and submissions would be due 28 February 2015.

If you’re interested in contributing please contact Rebecca Mallett (r.mallett@shu.ac.uk) and Brett Mills (brett.mills@uea.ac.uk) by 8th September 2014 with an outline of your intended contribution; formal abstracts are not necessary at this stage. If you’d like to talk through any initial ideas with either or both of us before this date, please feel free to get in touch.

The Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS), Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, offers one [fees only] bursary for a full-time PhD student. This is part of the overall research strategy of the centre, which aims to encourage and support the most important work in the field.

Like much work in the field of Disability Studies, the work of the CCDS is fundamentally concerned with social justice, with challenging and changing the inequalities and prejudices that people who are disabled face on a daily basis. Though there are other centres for disability studies in the United Kingdom, the CCDS is unique in its focus on culture as the means by which prejudices around disability are circulated and perpetuated. This focus is explored in our journal, monographs, edited books, articles, seminar series, book series, presentations, networks, website, conferences, courses, and so on.

The successful applicant will be welcomed into this internationally recognised, vibrant community and expected to make a significant contribution to it. Her or his research will be interdisciplinary, investigating aspects of historical, cultural, and/or educational representations of disability.

The successful applicant may have the opportunity to teach on our undergraduate Special Educational Needs course and, if so, teaching will be paid at the appropriate rates. In addition the bursary holder will be required to offer administrative support to the CCDS. The Dean has budgeted for up to 50 hours paid via Hope Works at the basic rate for administrative support.

The bursary will cover full-time Home/EU PhD fees for three years starting 1st October 2014 [£3,980 per academic year]. Payment of the bursary will be made directly to the Liverpool Hope University Finance Department annually. International applicants are welcome, and must be eligible to study in the UK.

The successful applicant will meet the University standard academic entry criteria for admission to a PhD, and will undertake the typical applicant process [including expression of interest, full application, and face to face interview]. It is expected that the successful applicant will complete and submit their PhD thesis within three years of initial registration. Continuation on the PhD is depended upon ongoing successful academic progression throughout the course.

The Centre for Culture and Disability Studies PhD Fees Bursary is only available for PhD applicants to study within this area of expertise at Liverpool Hope University.

All applicants should use the Online Application System [please refer to the ‘Apply Now’ tab]. The standard deadline for Postgraduate Research applications for an October 2014 start has passed; however, applications for the CCDS PhD Fees Bursary follow the time frame stated above. When completing the application form you will need to enter your start date as January 2014/15, but you will be considered only for October 2014.

Expression of Interest
Applicants have up to 500 words to describe their area of interest to research for the PhD. Please provide as much information and detail at this stage to enable the reviewers to assess the potential project. From this a decision will be made whether or not to invite you to submit a full application.

Full Application
Applicants invited to submit a full application must complete all sections of the application form as appropriate. Candidates are invited to choose their own research project, although it is expected that it will fall within the area of Culture and Disability Studies. As with all doctoral programmes applicants will only be considered in areas where active research is present and a supervisory team can be provided. Please make use of the ‘Advice on Writing a Research Proposal’ available on our applicant pages to guide you.

Interviews
Interviews for candidates will take place at the main Hope Park Campus. For students at distance arrangements can be made for a Skype interview. If you are invited to submit a full application please hold the interview dates in your diary. Candidates selected for interview will be contacted no later than Friday 5th September to confirm the date and time.

Questions
Should you have any questions about the applicant process, please contact: Mr Chris Lowry, Research Support Officer: researchdegrees@hope.ac.uk

The formation of Western categories of gay/straight, and the identities politics which are predicated on this formation, have largely erased bisexuality. This erasure is evident in both scholarly and community discourses, although in recent years in the UK there have been increasingly successful attempts to include bisexuals alongside lesbians, gays and trans people under the ‘LGBT’ acronym. Whilst bisexual people have become (arguably) more socially visible, there remains a large gap in contemporary sex/gender scholarship around bisexuality. This talk aims to begin to map out the territory, building on the existing work of scholars working mostly within sociology and cultural studies. The talk discusses possible directions for analysis, including interationaism, poststructuralism, queer theory and trans theory. It suggests that a materialist analysis is important in understanding the lived experiences of bisexual people, in keeping with a broader materialist turn within the social sciences. The talk draws on empirical material from research conducted in the UK.

Pain is not just an individual physical or emotional experience. The ways in which it is represented and imagined, and the knowledges, beliefs and values that surround it, have a direct effect on how it is experienced and managed by individuals, families and social groups. This event takes an interdisciplinary look at how pain is caused, experienced, understood and communicated exploring the following questions:

How do different cultural and sub-cultural groups deal with pain: what kinds of beliefs and values do they have about pain; what kinds of rituals and forms of therapy do they employ in managing it; how do they communicate it? What can we learn from diverse cultural and historial perspectives on pain?

Pain is represented in the arts in multiple ways: as something to be feared and conquered; as something that offers fascination and drama. What kinds of images of pain do we draw on in the UK? How can images of pain in the visual and literary arts affect people’s experiences of pain and our strategies for managing it?

How do beliefs and ideas about pain affect its representation as a social problem, for example in relation to policies providing access to health and social services? What kinds of scientific evidence are required in demonstrating the efficacy of pain management therapies? How do dominant societal ideas about pain affect social and economic policies relating to worklessness and benefits?

What is the science behind pain and its perception by people and how is this linked to the social and psychological questions? What is is the basis for the analgesic “placebo” effect? What is the link between pain and addiction/reward? What is the basis of pain experience changes as we age?

Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study and Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, in collaboration with the Durham Forum for Health, will explore these questions in these two events; firstly a public talk, followed by a full day workshop.

07 May: An evening public event centred on a panel discussion with three speakers, addressing the questions above and inviting contributions from a public audience.

Chair: Professor: Professor Jane Macnaughton

Dr Clare Roques: Is Pain a Problem to be Fixed? An International Perspective

Dr Suzannah Biernoff: Iconographies of pain and stoicism

Dr Rachael Gooberman-Hill: Research into pain: ethnographic and clinical perspectives

08 May: A one-day workshop, co-hosted by the University’s Biophysical Sciences Institute, aimed at initiating an interdisciplinary project on pain.

Slot 2: Arianna Introna (Univ. of Stirling, UK): A Scottish ‘paradox of devaluation in the midst of perpetual discussion’? Narratives of Disability in Scottish Studies

Abstract: Scottish cultural and literary discourse has oscillated between visions of Scottish culture perceived as ‘neurotic’, ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘deformed’ due both to disabling historical processes and to the ensuing cultural anxiety, and conceptualizations which have re-valued it as ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’. Both perspectives have reproduced unexamined assumptions regarding the undesirability and necessary erasure of disability. In order to investigate the extent to which the neglect of a disability studies perspective in Scottish literary criticism may be rooted in the specificities of a Scottish cultural context, my presentation will examine the simultaneous reliance on and rejection of narratives of disability in Scottish Studies. This exploration is work in progress as part of my PhD research on the interaction between representations of disability and the politics of belonging in Scottish literature.

Venue: The seminar will be held in the Arundel Building, 122 Charles Street, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB. For a map of City Campus click here.

If you, or anybody you know, would like to present at a DRF seminar please do get in touch. Alternatively, let us know if there is an issue/article/book you’d like to facilitate a round table discussion on.

Even if you do not intend to present, feel free to come along, listen and share your thoughts. For lunchtime slots, please feel free to bring your own food and drink.

We aim to be accessible and have produced some guidelines of which we would like presenters to be mindful – these can be accessed here: Accessible Presenting

To offer to present, facilitate a discussion or for more detailed access information please contact: Rebecca Mallett: r.mallett@shu.ac.uk or 0114 225 4669 or Jenny Slater: j.slater@shu.ac.uk or 0114 225 6691.

Slot 1: Cassie Ogden (Univ. of Chester, UK): Troubling Borders with Bodies that Seep: an critical sociological exploration into children’s experiences of leaky realities and how we can learn to accept our bodies in all its leaky glory.

Slot 2: Jenny Slater (SHU): School Toilet Chat: Exploring how Issues of Space, Access, Embodiment, Identity and ‘Normal’ Function in the the Lives of Young People

For George (2011), toilets are “the big necessity”; a mundane part of life that, until absent or inadequate, we rarely pay attention. One place these facilities are consistently found to be inadequate are in schools (Burton, 2013, Greed, 2010). Vernon, Lundblad and Hellstrom (2003) reported that 62% of boys and 35% of in the UK avoided using toilets whilst at school (citing reasons of lack of hygiene, privacy and bullying); and in 2013, a study in Scotland similarly highlighted the poor state of school toilet (Burton, 2013). Here I seek feedback on a proposal which hopes to utilise theorisations of disability, queer and fat activists and academics, to think hard about school toilets as transdisciplinary spaces to explore how issues of space, access, embodiment and normal function in the lives of young people.

***project 5 and 6 might be of particular interest to disability studies peeps***

Background: Rapid developments in bioengineering, computer science, psychology, and biomedicine are leading to increasing levels of interaction between humans and emerging biotechnologies in a wide range of settings from the clinic to the classroom. The use of these new technologies takes many forms, including implants, prosthetics, drugs and devices that modify or augment the body, and at the same time create new forms of individual and collective identity. These changes challenge both existing scientific and cultural categories and blur the boundaries between natural, social, and synthetic objects. The blurring of these boundaries raises important issues such as at what point does biology become artefact and technology become alive? In our increasingly biohybrid world, what does it mean to be living? And what does it mean to be human? The goal of the Biohybrid Human Network is to understand both the interactions and the distinctions between what we are and what we create, and to improve how we interact with our inventions. It involves academics from across the University of Sheffield and is initially focussed around three core research themes; i) biohybrid systems, ii) biohybrid individuals, iii) biohybrid societies.

We aim to create a cohort of PhD students who will work with the Biohybrid community to unite the pure and social sciences, medicine, engineering, and the arts. This requires flexible individuals with a range of backgrounds who will learn from each other and gain a wide range of research skills and enhanced interdisciplinary knowledge. We welcome applications from students who should have or expect to achieve an undergraduate honours degree at 2.1 or higher in a relevant field e.g. in computer science, cognitive science, Ecology, environmental engineering, neuroscience, psychology, social science or humanities. Students will receive a scholarship which will cover tuition fees at UK/EU rate and an annual stipend equivalent at the standard RCUK rate for 3 years full-time.

Projects available through the network:

Communicating with the environment through artificial ears: Perception of emotion in speech and music by cochlear implant users (Renee Timmers,r.timmers@sheffield.ac.uk; Department of Music).

Potential applicants are encouraged to contact the lead supervisor(s) directly to discuss and develop a project idea that interests them. Formal applications including a 3 page summary of the project idea (developed in collaboration with the lead supervisor), CV (with reference details – we will NOT contact your referees; it is your responsibility to request references and ensure we receive them), and degree transcripts (if available) should be submitted to the lead supervisor of the project you are interested in by 17thJanuary 2014.

The Equity Studies program, New College, University of Toronto, invites submissions for the inaugural edition of Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies. Knots is a peer-reviewed journal that will highlight high-calibre work by undergraduate students and undergraduate alumni that moves beyond normative biomedical conceptions of disability and contributes to the development and growth of Disability Studies as a field.

The editors are open to the widest array of discussion of relevant themes and topics that contribute to Disability Studies and the continued examination and deconstruction of ableism. Submissions in the forms of essays, book and film reviews, and art pieces are welcome. Suggested themes might include, but are by no means limited to:

intersectional analyses of sexuality/gender/class/race & disability

crip community, activism, allyship and disability rights;

representations, interpretations of disability in everyday life; in arts, athletics, and performance;

disability in local and global contexts; interactions in the medical and rehabilitative communities;

Requirements and Reviewing:Submissions should be original and unpublished with an emphasis on completed (rather than intended) works. Essays should be 2500 words maximum, excluding bibliography; book and film reviews should be 1000 words maximum; art pieces should be accompanied by an artists’ statement not in excess of 500 words. Manuscripts should be fully and correctly cited in APA style.

Submissions will be evaluated on both significance and relevance to the field of Disability Studies as well as technical strength and clarity, and should be accompanied by a 100-word abstract. Submitted work will be subject to peer-review; successfully reviewed entries will be returned to submitters for edits before being approved for publication. Once the editing period has come to a close, we will not accept any changes to an accepted paper.

Submission Procedure & Information: The submission process is electronic: all manuscript submissions can be made online to knots.contact@gmail.com by no later than January 30th, 2013. The author/s name and the title of work both should appear in the subject line of the email; the full manuscript should be attached as a PDF file to the editors. Any questions regarding content, submission, or accessibility requests should be directed to co-editor Sarah Hoedlmoser (sarah.hoedlmoser@gmail.com).

Critical Disability Discourse is a bilingual, interdisciplinary journal, publishing articles that focus on experiences of disability from a critical perspective. It was launched in November 2009 by York University’s Critical Disability Studies Graduate Student Program (www.yorku.ca/gradcdis). The journal considers articles from graduate scholars in a variety of academic fields, but undergraduate students, activists, and community members/organizers are also invited to contribute. Critical Disability Discourse’s goals are to provide emerging scholars with an opportunity to contribute to the expanding field of critical disability studies and to gain exposure for their work in the public sphere.

1. Articles must critically address a question about an aspect of disability and offer a new angle of thought and insight; they should contribute to scholarship in the field of Critical Disability Studies. Articles must involve a critical argument, rather than be only descriptive.

2. Articles must be submitted in either English or French. Authors must consent to the translation of their articles for publication.

3. In submitting a manuscript, authors affirm that the research is original and unpublished, is not in press or under consideration elsewhere, and will not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration by the journal.

5. In promoting inclusion and accessibility, the journal accepts and encourages tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations within the article. However, all tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations must include detailed written descriptions.

6. An abstract of 100-150 words should summarize the main arguments and themes of the article, the methods and results obtained, if the author’s own research was conducted, and the conclusions reached. A list of 5-7 keywords should also be included after the abstract.

7. We ask that authors are mindful of their language choices pertaining to disability and that they justify the use of controversial words.

8. Articles are peer-reviewed. Authors’ names and other identifying information must be removed in order to be sent to reviewers.

9. Authors are responsible for ethics approval for manuscripts by receiving approval from their own institutions. Proof of ethics approval (if applicable) should be provided to the journal.

10. The journal’s style generally follows the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; English spelling follows the most recent edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

11. Manuscripts must be entirely double-spaced (including quotations, notes, references) in 12-point Times New Roman font.